Constitution

2015/06/14

One of the ways rights are being threatened by government today is the creeping practice of what may be called displacements.

In psychology displacementbehavior is the substitution of behavior that is easier, safer, but unconducive to one's own best interests, for behavior that is more difficult, more risky, more conducive, but perhaps unacceptable in a larger context. The classic example is venting one's rage by uselessly smashing an inanimate object instead of doing something rational and effective about the real source of the frustration. It is usually to reduce emotional tension, without regard for solving underlying problems.

In law one of the forms displacement takes is making crimes out of what would previously been considered only evidence of a crime, often weak and circumstantial. This is usually done because the basic crime, the malum in se, is difficult to prove. So possession or production of evidence thought to be associated with the underlying crime is prosecuted, as an act of discretion in which the courts defer to the judgment of the prosecution that the suspect is a bad guy, having that reputation with the prosecutor, even though the prosecutor is unable or unwilling to actually prove he committed that underlying crime, or even that such a crime was actually committed by anyone. Presumption upon presumption, until the burden of proof falls on the accused to prove his innocence instead of on the prosecutor to prove his guilt.

A recent suspect involving two of these is former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, charged with money structuring and making false statements to FBI agents, about payments to a blackmailer in amounts of less than $10,000 each to avoid, to conceal his alleged acts of child molestation when he was a schoolteacher many decades ago. He was not charged with child molestation, prosecution of which is barred by a statute of limitations, and the payment of blackmail is not a crime, so the payments are not evidence of a crime, because there is no crime. Only the several payments made in amounts of less than $10,000 are considered to be the crime.

The legal theory for making a crime out of any false statement to a "government investigator" is that it is "obstruction of justice," like physically impeding officers while they are working. However, the statute is worded so vaguely that it can be used as a tool to prosecute anyone who says anything to a government agent, as long as two agents sign a form report that the statement was false, without providing any evidence like a recording of the conversation. Indeed that form can be signed without there having been any conversation at all. And it doesn't have to be a federal investigator working for what is usually perceived as an investigative agency. It could be a census taker. It could be a state or local agent, or even an agent of a foreign government outside the U.S. The hapless defendant, who may have just been trying to help, is treated as though he were under oath when he is not under oath.

Public Safety

A predictable response whenever there is an especially heinous shooting incident is to call for "stronger gun control laws". Yet almost none of the statutes proposed would do anything to prevent incidents like the one that occurred. Almost all seem to be predicated on the demonstrably false model that gun laws reduce the numbers of firearms generally available, and that that would reduce the firearms available to criminals. Yet it is more likely to result in more shootings by criminals who will have no trouble getting firearms and use them in a target-rich environment of unarmed victims. That kind of simplistic linear thinking is common to most kinds of displacement proposals.

The rational solution would be to so organize society that it can identify dangerous individuals and intervene before they can do harm, but most ways government might try to do that would be a danger to civil liberties and standards like due process of law. So some people seize on doing something easy so they can say they are doing something, even when what they are doing is useless or even harmful.

2015/06/02

A
flaw in most discussions of "piracy" is the lack of a coherent and
historically accurate definition of what the term meant to the Framers
when they wrote the Piracy Clause. The United States Supreme Court
decision in the 1820 case of United States v. Smith, 18 US 153, did us a great
disservice when it confined it to "robbery at sea", following the
comment by Framer James Wilson in one of his lectures. "Piracy" as
originally understood included more than robbery and more than "at
sea".

As a legal term, as distinct from a lay term, the term is best
understood as "a warlike act by a nonstate actor against assets of a
country other than his own". If it were against assets of his own
country it would be treason or an ordinary felony. Thus it includes
actions for political purposes as well as for gain, and on land as well
as at sea or on other waters.

Thus, all the acts now classified as "terrorism" would be species of "piracy" in constitutional terms, and the Piracy Clause in the U.S. Constitution is the only authority for prosecuting them if they are foreign nationals. The Treason Clause is the only authority for prosecuting them if they are U.S. nationals.

Originally the standard of due process
for piracy was a military tribunal on the spot, followed by immediate
execution. Because it is a crime of "universal jurisdiction", there is
no issue of double jeopardy, and the same offenses can be tried by any
number of nations under their national laws against piracy. The standard
penalty has always been death, to be deferred only long enough to
obtain intelligence on other pirating operations and offenders.

2015/06/01

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.καὶ ἵνα μή τις δύνηται ἀγοράσαι ἢ πωλῆσαι εἰ μὴ ὁ ἔχων τὸ χάραγμα, τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ θηρίου ἢ τὸν ἀριθμὸν τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ. — Apocalypse (Revelation) of John, 13:17, King James translation.

Is the social security number or its equivalent in the United States and other countries (here called "SSN" for short) the "number of the beast" foretold by John? Many believe that it is. (See links at end.) It is certainly taking on all the attributes of what seems to have been foretold. Today it is being made increasingly difficult to borrow money, get a job, receive government benefits, vote, or open a bank account, without it. Some think John meant only that believers would be forced to use Roman currency, with the visage of the emperor stamped on it, rather than currency issued by Hebrews or other nationalities. But historically it was never mandated that people use Roman coins for all transactions, only for the payment of taxes. Never before in history have we approached such comprehensive intrusion into ordinary business, "that no man might buy or sell". The United States is increasingly making it difficult even for foreign nationals to do business without an SSN in their own countries if the transactions might involve the U.S. banking system.

Until sometime in the 1980s every social security card had printed on it the words:

"For social security purposes - not for identification".

We can ask what is the significance of removal of that warning.

Most people find nothing wrong with having to present their SSN to conduct business. After all, they think, we all have one so what is wrong with having to present it, other than the fact that identity thieves can use it to steal one's money. The ease with which that can be done should be a warning clue to everyone, because it means that the government can steal your money with it as well, or make it difficult to live without its permission. The government can cancel a person's SSN at any time, and refuse to issue a replacement, making one a kind of stateless nonperson, almost an outlaw in the sense of that word in medieval times, as one anyone could kill with impunity. We may not have gotten that far yet, but we are getting close. Many argue that yielding to the demands that one present a SSN makes one a kind of slave to a godlike (or godless) state, and one that is becoming increasingly abusive of our rights.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. — Benjamin Franklin for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its Reply to the Governor (11 Nov. 1755).

Most people dismiss such concerns as conspiracy theory nonsense. The government can be trusted not to do something like that. And even if it did, it wouldn't do it to everyone, and what could we do about it anyway. Just be a meek little worker or welfare recipient and don't ask too many questions. In other words, submit to your slavery.

We must repeal §326 of the Patriot Act

The provisions of the USA Patriot Act that expired, as this is written, do not include §326, which has the effect of making every financial institution that operates in the U.S., or even beyond, enforcers of rules to provide an SSN. §326 of the Patriot Act does not do this explicitly. It only requires financial institutions "know" who their customers are, and require of them some kind of numerical identification. It does not say that has to be an SSN, but then the regulations state that the SSN shall be deemed in compliance with the Act, and that makes all the institutions demand it.

As important as it is to end excessive surveillance, §326 of the Patriot Act is far more important than the expired provisions. In a way, those provisions almost seem to be a distraction, drawing our attention from a far greater threat to our liberties.

The USA Freedom Act needs to be amended to repeal §326, then passed with some further amendments. That may be our last chance to avoid a slavery from which we will never emerge, something we are doing to ourselves which, if done to us by a foreign country, would be grounds for going to war against them. If we continue to do such things to ourselves, the terrorists will nave won.

Flemming v. Nestor,363 U.S. 603(1960), held that there is no contractualrightto receive Social Security payments. Payments due under Social Security are not “property” rights and are not protected by the Takings Clause of theFifth Amendment. — Wikipedia article.

Is there a Right to Social Security?, Michael Tanner, Cato Institute. — U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "contributions" are only taxes, that workers have no legally binding contractual rights to their Social Security benefits, and that those benefits can be cut or even eliminated at any time.

As there is no property right in the benefits associated with the social
security number, there would seem not to be any associated with the
number itself, at least not when the federal government uses it. One
could argue for a property right created by other, private, uses of the
number, but since the federal government can delete it at any time, any
right could only be to some benefit "once designated by SSN xxx-xx-xxxx
as of mm/dd/yyyy". If a private party contracted to provide a benefit
and attempted to avoid the obligations of the contract on the grounds
the number has been deleted, it would likely be denied judgment, if only
on the grounds of "unjust enrichment", quantum meruit.

A number, like a name, is only a label applied to something by someone.
No one "owns" it. In particular, one doesn't own one's own name. Anybody
can call you anything he wants, and you can call yourself anything you
want, or nothing at all. There is no constitutional authority to require
anyone to present anything one is not required to have, and there is no
constitutional authority to require anyone to have a name, or number,
or any other kind of label.

It is a federal felony to "misstate a social security number" for any purpose, but even if you give the correct number, if an incorrect number is found in anything associated with you, then the burden of proof is on you that it was not you who misstated it. That allows the government to induce a computer clerk to alter the SSN on one's bank account, then prosecute him. Anyone can be destroyed that way.

2015/05/09

As a frequent candidate for elected office I have learned the disappointing
lesson that solutions don't sell — at least not to most of the voters.
As soon as one gets specific, one loses more support than one gains.

I learned that lesson from managing mail fundraising campaigns. Most
such campaigns cost about as much as they bring in. A campaign is a
success if it brings in 5% more than it costs. What can work to do that
is to arouse emotions with presentation of dire problems. Present any
solutions and the campaign loses money. Ask people to help cure heart
disease, but don't ask them to help fund a specific remedy, because that
dispels the emotionality from requiring people to think.

Now as a candidate I don't shrink from presenting solutions. I know
it will lose more votes than it will win, and I accept that. As a
Libertarian candidate I don't expect to win anyway, and use the
campaign as a teaching moment to enlighten people and perhaps lay the
foundation for some of them to help with solutions down the way. When I
offer solutions in a speech, I can watch as most of the audience glazes
over, and the rest seize on one of the many remedies to oppose and
decide to oppose the rest as well just because they didn't like one. I
often present long lists of hundreds of solutions, like my proposed amendments,
and instead of members of the audience focusing on one or two they
like, they will focus on one or two they don't like, and ignore the
rest.

You might think my preferred approach would work with some audiences,
and it does work better with some, such as scientists, engineers, and
similar professionals, when the solutions are in their professional
field, but venture outside their field and one gets the same reaction.
Even among professionals one gets many who seize on specifics they don't
like.

Now you might think I'm insane for trying to do the same thing over
and over and expect a different result, but I don't expect a different
result. I hope for a single individual now and then to become inspired
to inquire further into the matter. Unfortunately, most of those then go
on to trying to develop their own solutions, usually lame, rather than
supporting mine, which also might not be perfect but are better than
most other people are able to come up with.

I keep doing it because I accept responsibility only for doing my
best, not for getting outcomes. But it is disappointing, because at
stake is the very survival of our civilization and all that generations
of men have fought and died to achieve. Makes me glad I am old enough
that I won't be around to see how it turns out.

2015/04/27

The Supreme Court is currently hearing the case ofObergfell v. Hodges, addressing the constitutionality of laws restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples. However, most of the arguments are abysmally confused.

First there is confusion on what marriage is. As a matter of law it is a contract among two (or more) individuals. (Most can agree it would make no sense to use the term for a contract between an individual and a corporation.) As a custom, it is the physical relationship among individuals, involving activities like living together and having sex. But the relationship can exist without the contract and the contract without the relationship. So what is involved in the litigation? Does it make sense to say that two individuals have a "right to marry" that some jurisdictions are trying to forbid? Do the parties to such a relationship have some right to have the state call it "marriage", as distinct from calling it a "domestic partnership" or some other term?

The simple obvious answer to the last question is no. A state, like an individual, may use any name it pleases for anything it wants. No one has some right to dictate the choice of words anyone or anything must use for anything. Conflicting uses of different words for the same things, or the same words for different things, may cause confusion, but constitutionally there is no right or power to require anyone to use terms in certain ways, as long as there is not confusion or fraud.

Part of the confusion seems to come from regarding official recognition of some relationship as a "marriage" as some kind of license, that could be withheld, or that such a relationship can constitutionally be banned by banning the contract. In the past, in some jurisdictions, that has been attempted, with things like marriage licenses, or criminal prosecution for relationships that were not officially authorized, such as with individuals that were too young, or among more than two, or fraudulently marrying one individual while still being married to another. But there are no more marriage licenses that carry criminal penalties, and officially recognizing a "marriage" is not some kind of license.

Marriage does not need to be ordained by government or a church. It is ordained, if at all, by one's friends and family. The rest is magical thinking.

Constitutionally, no government in the United States may forbid any two or more consenting adults to enter into any contract to do anything. The activity under the contract might be made a crime, and the existence of a contract deemed evidence of a conspiracy, but, except for fraud, there is no constitutional way to penalize parties from merely entering into a contract of any kind. The courts of a jurisdiction may decline to enforce certain contracts which it disapproves, but not to prevent entry into them.

This case is not about attempts to forbid the relationship. The decision in Lawrence v. Texas established that it is unconstitutional to penalize consenting adults of the same gender from having sex with one another. That disposes of the issue of official restriction of the relationship. But can the state constitutionally refuse to call the relationship "marriage"? Yes. Can it constitutionally refuse to enforce the terms of a contract governing such a relationship? Also yes. Can it constitutionally withhold benefits to the parties in such a relationship? That depends. It may withhold some benefits to the parties to some relationships and not to others, but not because the parties call it marriage. It is the substance of things, not the names for them, that matters in law. It could, for example, extend benefits to couples with children that are withheld from couples without children.

Many of the issues raised involve benefits like inheritance or hospital visitation. As the first may be consented to by a written will, and the second by a consent form, such as a "living will, then by by calling their relationship "marriage", perhaps in writing so they have something to show to others, the state has no rational basis for discriminating against some wills or consent forms and not others. The appropriate remedy is for the parties to put it in writing.

One of the benefits government can provide is to make available a standard contract that people can invoke by name, without having to renegotiate the terms that have taken millennia to develop. That is a great convenience. Of course, people can refer to the standard contract, but then contract to deviate from the standard or to supplement it in some ways. We call those "prenuptial agreements". Government does that for many kinds of standard contract, such as between landlord and tenant, employer and employee, or seller and buyer. Having such standard contracts is a great convenience for all concerned. But can government constitutionally forbid anyone from using one of its standard contracts, by merely referring to it by name? No, unless there is fraud, and fraud is a separate issue from entry into the contract, which might be evidence of fraud but is not essentially fraud.

But it is not essential for government to present standard contracts for anything. Publishers of legal forms can do that just as well.

Advocates of government recognition or certification of same-sex marriage also sometimes argue that it is not about licensing the contract or relationship, but about conferring dignity on it, the way churches and other religious institutions have traditionally done in most countries. The explanation is that such recognition or dignity operates to dispel much of the customary social rejection that might otherwise occur. They argue that there is an equal right to having such dignity conferred on their contract or relationship. But is that a constitutional right?

Constitutional rights, at least in the Constitution of 1787, are restrictions on government not to exert some kind of force on individuals. They are not rights to receive a sufficiency of some benefit, no matter how inexpensive it might be, except the benefit of disclosure of information about the operations of government. There is not even a right to have a trial on the legal merits of a dispute, because the parties always have the options of self-help, although self-help by government would be tyranny, or of private courts, to avoid the destruction self-help is prone to bring. On the other hand, if conferring the benefit costs nothing, or almost nothing, there can certainly be an equal right not to have government withhold the benefit.

But how much dignity would be conferred on something if there was indiscriminate recognition of everything for anything? The dignity would be meaningless if it is not withheld from some while being conferred on others. If so, then for whom might the dignity be reasonably and constitutionally withheld, and who decides? Should it be decided by anyone but a jury?

Would it make more sense, or be more constitutional, for government to simply withhold all recognition or other acts that confer dignity? Clearly, it has to recognize some things, and not others, to perform its duties, but if society takes such recognition as the conferring of dignity, that is a matter of custom, not law. If people insist on adopting such customs, then perhaps it would be better for government to get and stay out of the recognition business for any but essential government purposes, and marriage is not one of those. Even default contracts could be published by private institutions. There is no need for government to do so.

The Supreme Court could do us all a great favor by making all of the above points clear. That would mean judgment for the plaintiffs, but not for their arguments.

Postscript, following the decision in the case:

The ruling comes down to, if the state issues marriage licenses to
opposite-gender couples, it has to issue them to same-gender couples as
well.

But it doesn't have to issue marriage licenses to anyone.The only constitutional right involved in this case is the right not to be licensed at all.

If it doesn't want to be in the position of "recognizing" same-sex
marriages, then don't "recognize" any marriages. It doesn't license
an employer to hire an employee, or a landlord to rent property to a
tenant. Marriage licenses should not be the business of the state.
Leave marriage to the common law.

"Common law" in this context means what
it means in the expression that "Texas is a common law state".
That means that although it has a law about marriage licensing and
a waiting period, a couple may alternatively become "married" by
just introducing themselves as married to someone else, or living
together for some period of time in an intimate relationship
(which used to be six months in Texas). Most of the marriages I
have seen among younger people don't bother with the license, and
no one enforces the law on that.

The appropriate law for such relationships is the law of
contracts, and in particular, of partnerships. In Texas
partnerships don't need to be registered or licensed. The main way
it shows up in a public record is when a partnership, as grantee,
files a deed of record to some real property in its name. (It may
also want to file a fictitious name with the county or state.)

The main way a domestic partnership would initially show up in the
public record would then be when a birth is certified showing the
names of the parents. The birth would be deemed to create the
partnership, as would adoption or guardianship by two (or more)
persons of any gender.

In other words, treat "marriage" just like any other kind of
partnership. Don't even need a special name for it. The common law
of fraud and specific performance would apply.

Of course, Equal Protection and the protection of contracts would also apply.
Government could not permit or forbid contracts of any kind, even
if it chose not to enforce some of them, such as a contract to
commit a crime.

Far from being too late to adopt such a norm, this is the perfect
opportunity to do so.

From Dale Robertson, on another list:

In fact the major reason for the embrace of Common Law at Washington
on the Brazos in the spring of 1836 was the fact that Texans assembled
there were hell bent on giving legitimacy to the thousands of children
born of the natural union of young men and women on the bald prairie that
was then Texas who had no access whatever to civil or religious ceremony
giving legitimacy to marriage leaving the children of such unions to be stigmatized with the despicable moniker of "bastard" - a very
serious denigration at that time in Texas History. It was the Common Law of England which was sought to remedy the problem and it is the legal
residue of which that can now today be read as Article 1.27 of the Texas
Code of Criminal Procedure.

I am a full advocate of abolition of the state being a party to
Marriages via a license procedure. I am please to note that my own sister, at
her then age 53 was married for the first time to an English Sea Captain (Commanding Officer of the Wave Knight a high speed armed 650 foot,
34,000 ton British Navy supply ship - a floating "Walmart" for the British
Navy resupply on this high seas) the good Captain, is now retiring
following the present voyage he has announced to be his last having entered "service" as a lowly cadet at his age 16 - some 45 years ago) and
chose to be married in a Common Law Ceremony in a Texas Brazos County hay pasture at the foot of a Bodark Tree (by a lay minister and lawyer
who happens to be a licensed practitioner of law in Texas) with the
ceremony being performed under Texas and British Common Law. An interesting
bit of relevant history in my own family giving living reality to British
Common Law in Texas in the 21st Century - backed up by Article 1.27 of the
Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.

2015/04/12

I am the Founder and President of the
Constitution Society, website at http://constitution.org.
I urge the Texas Legislature to adopt SB 135, to require all grand
juries be selected at random rather than through the “key man”
procedure in use in some countries.

This committee may, however, amend this
bill, to take it in a more constitutional direction, to provide that
grand juries comply with all of the following traditional standards
for proper grand juries:

Selected at random from the
general public, with perhaps some filtering, but without "stacking".

New research by a Bowling Green State University criminologist shows
that 41 officers in the U.S. were charged with either murder or
manslaughter in connection with on-duty shootings over a seven-year
period ending in 2011. Over that same period, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation reported 2,718 justified homicides by law enforcement, an
incomplete count, according to experts.

§ This case requires us to determine the constitutionality of the
use of deadly force to prevent the escape of an apparently unarmed
suspected felon. We conclude that such force may not be used unless it
is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to
believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious
physical injury to the officer or others. . . .(3)

The first journalist to pick up this problem with Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC, himself a former prosecutor: http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/shocking-mistake-in-darren-wilson-grand-jury-364273731666
. As O’Donnell explains with quotations from the transcript, the
grand jury was given a copy of the law at the start of their
consideration of the Wilson case, then told at the end that a Supreme
Court decision had “created problems” with that law. Then, the grand
jurors were told to ignore the Missouri law – but given no other
standard to use in assessing whether the use of deadly force was lawful.

According to the source of all knowledge (Wikipedia), 29 states still “employ some form of use grand jury.”

According to the Survey of Court Organization (http://cdm16501.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/juries/id/180),
18 states require indictments for felony prosecutions, but most states
do have grand juries for at least some purposes (presumably, in some
states prosecution can flow from either a grand jury indictment or
alternatively at the sole discretion of the prosecutor through an
information).

Grand juries usually have to decide by a 2/3rds or 3/4ths vote –
unanimity (as far as I know) is nowhere required. In the Ferguson
case, the grand jury had 9 whites and 3 blacks with a ¾ voting rule.
The vote was secret but obviously it was numerically possible for the
grand jury to block a “true bill” with only white votes.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_6
. In the federal system, one needs 12 jurors to return a “true
bill” but the number of jurors on a panel can vary between 16 and 23.
As Jim rightly notes, jurors cannot be screened out of a panel in
advance for conflicts of interest with particular cases – they are
empaneled to hear months of cases at a time. That said, the federal
system permits challenges to individual jurors who are not “legally
qualified” to sit on the grand jury.

How grand juries are selected at the state level depends on state law which varies widely:

The Ferguson grand jury was unusual because the proceedings were
made public. Grand jury testimony is usually secret, and any grand
juror can be prosecuted for disclosing grand jury testimony. This is
one reason why we know so little about how grand juries operate. In
virtually all cases, no one is talking.

The chief prosecutors in the 2,344 separate prosecutorial districts
in the United States hold very secure jobs. We can begin with the
success rate of incumbents across all general election races: the
sitting prosecutors won 71% of the general elections. The more
pertinent number, however, is the success rate of incumbent prosecutors
in elections when they seek re-election. Because the incumbent sought
re-election in only 75% of all general election campaigns, the
incumbent success rate when running for office was 95%.

2015/03/24

A better way to govern ourselves than simple elections might be called a “Darwinian” (or "Darwinoid") process, similar to
what is done using genetic (or evolutionary) algorithms. Perhaps the
best historical example of that was the Venetian system. It could be implemented in many ways. Consider one design:

1. At the precinct level (using the U.S.model of equipopulous
precincts) two equal sized panels are selected by lot, or sortition. Then they select a
pool of candidates to the next level (ward) by each panel voting for
the best ten percent of the members of the other panel, and together for
an equal number of individuals from outside either panel.

2. Candidates from the precinct pool are drawn at random to form two
equal sized ward panels. The process is repeated to select two equal
sized district panels.

3. The process is repeated to form two equal sized state panels (unless
there are political subdivisions in between), and again to form two
equal sized national panels.

4. The process is repeated to select a small number, say nine,
candidates for the one national pool, from which a single official is
selected at random.

A similar multi-step process would be used to select legislators, judges, administrators, etc.

In the judicial track, pairs of grand juries would select members of
the next grand or any trial juries, and pose the questions they are to
decide, after consulting with witnesses.

So random selection alternates with fitness election in a way that
should enable the best and brightest (who don’t necessarily want the
job) to bubble up to the top. Each participant in the process has an
incentive to vote for the best rather than just a fellow partisan,
because an obvious partisan would be less likely to survive to reach a
higher level.

Voting rules within panels would use super majority votes, approval voting, or some other alternative to first-past-the-post.

A well-designed constitution should be able to combine many processes
with many advantages, including both impartiality and prevention of the
domination of the political process by factions, and also a
statistically-representative microcosm of the entire citizen body, in
order to discover what everyone would think under good conditions. There
is no fundamental reason why those elected under some “principle of
distinction” must be or become unrepresentative, if it is done in the
right way. Having two legislative houses, one selected by sortition and
the other by election, might be one way to do that, but we also need
processes for executive and judicial questions. I have proposed such
solutions at http://www.constitution.org/reform/us/con_amend.htm .

This is not arguing there is a uniquely “best” choice, but there are
certainly some that are better than others. The most important decisions
that a polity must make are not just matters of taste or fair
distribution, but of survival, that is , fitness. There can be more than
one way to survive, perhaps giving rise to a fork in evolution, into
two or more different lines, but most of the possible decisions lead to
extinction. To build on the Platonic analogy, a captain may take his
ship safely to any of several favorable ports, if more than one exists,
but only one may be within range, and unless he is not very, very good
at sailing, he may also take it to the bottom of the sea. Navigation is
more a matter of skill, not of luck, taste, or fairness.

A reference can be made to the utilitarian rule of “the
greatest good for the greatest number”, but that is too simple. It is
the greatest good for the greatest number that is not too inequitable
and that does not risk survival. (There is always some risk with any
choice, but an optimal strategy improves the odds.)

Representivity is a value, for decisions about taste or distribution
(justice), but not the uniquely highest values, which are honor,
liberty, and aggregate prosperity, which are always at risk, even if it
seems only taste or distribution are at stake.

The Universe is not organized for our comfort or convenience. It
allows us to survive, sometimes, for a while, but survival is always
nmarginal, and most decisions are a course along the edge of survival,
trying to hang on as long as we can. We live in a unique period of easy
prosperity when it seems good times will go on forever, however foolish
our decisions might be. But that time is not forever, and we can easily
bring it to an end sooner than necessary.

Most proposals for some kind of diarchy between advocates and judges neglect to consider that if
elites control who may advocate what and how, who may judge, and how the
deliberations may be structured or conducted, and what procedures are
to be used, then those elites may still steer the “judges” to get any
outcome they want.

This proposal does not conflate the functions, but divides them into
balanced bodies, and allows darwinian-selected bodies to decide not only
judgments but also the questions, structure, and procedures, for
themselves and other bodies. There is no one single decisionmaking body,
but a complex system of bodies that check and balance one another,
while moving decisions to a final stage and to implementation.

So, for example, grand juries can supervise the selection of trial
juries and successor grand juries, rather than leaving that to
professionals like judges or prosecutors. Grand juries would not just
decide whether to indict, but appoint the prosecutor (who could be a
private citizen). Jurors would hear all the arguments made to the judge
in a trial or hearing, so that they could condition their verdict on
what they observed.

Several terms might be used for a system that alternates between random selection and merit screening:

darwinition

eduction

winnowing

winition

fetura — Latin for breeding

How it might be realized

Nothing is going to happen unless or until we have a lot of
successful exercises of it at the local and private levels. The Morena party in Mexico provides an example of that for nominating candidates. Election itself was not adopted until it
had been successfully tried in many exercises over decades or centuries.

A good place to start would be in public and private schools. That is
where most of us first learned at least a simplified version of
Robert’s Rules of Order, but that started with the election of class
officers, so the indoctrination began early. I can imagine that using a
kind of Venetian system might be popular among students.

So it might take a generation or two, and we may not have that long, but we do what we can.

There are several ways sortition could be done in the U.S. without
amending the Constitution, although after it was working for a while we
might want to amend the Constitution to entrench it:

(1) Selecting the electors of the Electoral College. The method we
use now is prescribed by statue in every state. No reason those have to
be selected by a popular vote for slates of electors, but might need to
begin by changing the law to require electors be elected individually
and separately rather than by slate. That might prepare the public for a
better way.

(2) Selecting the nominees for U.S. Senate. The 17th amendment now
requires a popular election, but says nothing about nomination.
Sortition (or more precisely, fetura/eduction/winition — a Venetian-like
method) could be used to narrow the alternatives to two, although
write-ins would have to be allowed.

(3) Selecting the members, or at least the nominees, for U.S. House of
representatives. Even if the statute requiring single-member districts
were not repealed, this could be done in each district. Perhaps just for
nomination, with election for the last two.

(4) Appointing federal judges not to a particular court, but to a
general pool from which they would be randomly assigned to courts for
one term, and to cases until the case is decided, including the Supreme
Court.

(5) Use eduction for appointing and assigning civil servants, leaving
them in one assignment long enough to learn their jobs, but not long
enough to “build an empire” there. (This is now done for military
personnel.)

(6) Use fetura to appoint and assign most congressional staffers to
members, to avoid having them becoming the real power in each house.

(7) Use winition to appoint members of all kinds of boards and commissions.

(8) Require all states to use sortition to select members of grand juries.

(9) Use sortition to select a successor to the president and vice-president in case they both leave office prematurely.

Every one of these appointments is now done according to statute and could be done differently without constitutional amendment.

Adoption of any such reform may be unlikely unless or until we undergo a traumatic event that
is blamed on the electoral process. (Although one might think we are
already in the midst of such.)

2015/03/01

The question is often asked, what good would new amendments do? Wouldn't the powers that be just ignore them like the original?

Actually,
there is substantial compliance with the Constitution for those
passages that are totally unambiguous. Most of the departures have taken
advantage of ambiguities in about 80 terms or clauses, some that are
fairly subtle, and the first section of my proposals would go most of
the way to clarifying those ambiguities and overturning wrong court precedents that support the departures. See http://constitution.org/reform/us/con_amend.htm
However, as you will find in the introduction to the proposals, simply
calling an Article V convention and expecting the delegates to come up
with proposals, without a long process of hammering out proposed amendments by experts, on which the convention would just vote up or down without changes, would at best be a disaster. There are fewer than 200 persons alive today
with the skills to competently draft amendments, and none of them would
be delegates. Imagine a joint meeting of the Republican and Democratic
conventions trying to agree on a platform, much less on carefully
crafted amendments to the Constitution. Congress, with the help of
well-paid lobbyists, couldn't draft a competent health care act, and
amendments, especially succinct ones, are vastly more difficult than ordinary statutes. That is in
large part due to the inability of people to understand the complex
systems they seek to manage, with millions of convoluted feedback loops.
Better to clarify the original meaning with modern language and leave
it at that, except for a few obvious errors and omissions in the
original document.

How an Article V convention might go terribly wrong

Can such a convention be instructed or controlled once it convenes? No. There is no enforcement process for any controls. Consider the following scenario:

Convention meets in secret

It proposes entire new constitution which contains no rights or restrictions on governmental powers

The proposal promises large benefits to every citizen or resident of the country, such as a minimum income of $100,000 a year (which would be impossible, but most people won't know that).

It declares it will go into effect when ratified by a national referendum of citizens (or perhaps even non-citizens)

A majority votes for it (and if they do how will anyone overcome that?)

Ruling class use the new government to solidify their control, make everyone dependent on them, suppress all dissent as "terrorism"

2014/09/02

A number of proposals have been made for reforming government abuses. Here are a few points:

Documentaries

Documentaries have already been done. They have some use in
recruiting activists, but almost none for effecting real reforms. If
they ever make it to a wider audience, the only result is a downtick
in public opinion polls, but no action. Anything less than detailed,
step-by-step, daily plans for the coordinated action by tens or
hundreds of thousands of dedicated individuals will work, and they
need to focus on real changes:

1. Legislation adopted and enforced. (Exact wording provided.)
2. Court decisions made and enforced, after winning on appeal (trial
decisions might help parties but don't make real changes). (Exact
wording provided.)
3. Removal of officials from office, imprisonment of some, and
perhaps replacement by much better ones. (Win elections, remove
immunities.)
4. Changes in school curricula and what students are tested on.
(Change the teachers and textbook authors.)
5. Changes in the incentives for officials to do the right things,
and to open government to intervention by outsiders. (It's the
System — structures and procedures.)
6. Get control of the media. (Social media is a start, but that
doesn't reach the majority.)

Never arouse concern without providing specific action plans that
can be carried out by individuals using the resources under their
control. Otherwise the only result is despair and discouragement.
Discouraged people don't make reforms. When individuals do take
steps, they need to be commended and supported to keep them going to
take the next steps.

Recruiting journalists

1. While most journalists may not want to investigate or write
stories, they usually know a lot of stories they can convey to you,
and thus can be a good source of information. They are worth
cultivating for that reason alone.

2. You need to write the stories for them. Most journalists don't
know enough about law to write about it. Most news reports are just
someone's press releases, so you need to flood the media with press
releases that tell the stories you want told, in effect making you
the investigative reporter. There are press release distribution
services that can do it for you at a cost you could not afford.

3. It is worth cultivating journalists through regular personal
encounters to develop your credibility and perhaps get them to cover
your own story sympathetically if you get in trouble doing all this.

4. The most receptive journalists are likely to be found in foreign
or foreign-owned media, such as the British Guardian and Telegraph
(Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, a friend from 1995 when he investigated
wrongdoing in the U.S., is now the editor of the Daily Telegraph.),
or Al Jazeera. They are also more likely to follow through
on a story over a period of time. Once they pick up on a story, that
makes the story news and provides domestic media some cover to pick
it up themselves. Fox News has been somewhat receptive,
especially since some of their associates and commentators are
lawyers.

5. Television media are reluctant to do stories without visual media
that can hold the attention of their viewers. Often their decisions
to cover are based more on good video footage than on the merits of
the story. The problem with coverage in this field is that so much
of what would make good visuals is barred from cameras, so you may
need to be clever about it. (That is the main reason judges ban
cameras from courts.) The good news is that they are increasingly
susceptible to using your footage rather than having to shoot their
own. But if you give them a copy (always keep the original), do it
with a contract that allows them first public use, while you retain
the copyright.

6. Some reporters learn about law by serving as courthouse
reporters, although they may be most fearful of losing access by
reporting the wrong stories or reporting the wrong way. Most
reporters, however, will only know enough to understand abuses
involving evidence, rather than abuses of due process or other areas
of law. For them, you may need to focus on the evidence rather than
confusing them with precedents.

7. In jurisdictions where judges are elected, their election
campaigns make stories about them more newsworthy, and provides
opportunities to insert critical material.

8. Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of judicial judicial
abuse is combined with prosecutorial abuse, because most such cases
involve the government as a party, or at least as an interested
background party. Indeed, the prosecutorial abuse is likely the
leading component of the overall problem. You can't fix one kind of
abuse without also fixing the other. And journalists are sometimes
more receptive to going after prosecutors than judges.

9. You can become a "stringer" for a media organization, feeding
them stories at a lower cost than from their regular journalists.
After feeding them with enough good material on general topics, you
can then start slipping in material on this more specialized topic.

10. Always keep copies of all the evidence you gather in a safe
place that will be disclosed if anything happens to you. Have more
than one copy in more than one safe place, because the opposition is
likely to always be able to find at least one of them. Don't let
your story die with you, as happened with Danny Casolaro
or Gary Webb,
who were "suicided".

2014/08/20

There has been a recent debate on the Volokh Conspiracy and the Originalism blog here, here, here, here, and here among Ilya Somin, Michael Ramsey, and Timothy Sandefur, over whether the meanings of the terms used in the U.S. Constitution should be taken from lay English of 1787, or from legal English. My responses are as follows:

The
Constitution provides critical guidance on how to strike the
balance between ordinary and specialized legal meanings of its
terms: It calls for most important legal issues to be adjudicated
in jury trials, with juries selected more or less at random from
the general community, which hopefully results in a panel of
twelve mostly reasonable persons, or who become more reasonable
when thus empaneled. But the original meaning of "jury trial" was
that all legal issues be made to the jury, not just to the judge,
so that in reaching a verdict, the jury is also reviewing the
legal argument and the decisions on points of law made by the
judge. Many trials will involve subtle legal issues with which the
jurors will not be familiar at the outset, but for which they
hopefully will become sufficiently knowledgeable by the time they
are asked to render a verdict. That essentially defines a standard
of interpretation that is accessible to ordinary people during the
intense legal education that is a trial, but not necessarily known
to them before that process begins.

There is also guidance from the way the Constitution was ratified:
By conventions in each state, elected by the people, but composed
of a high proportion of lawyers, who also dominated the debates.

Finally, we see the process during the Philadelphia Convention,
when members unsure of the meaning of some of the proposed
language (such as "ex post facto") referred to Blackstone or other
legal authorities to settle the question. That is a microcosm of
how they expected other constitutional terms to be resolved.

The people who elected the ratifiers mostly did not do so on
the basis of subtle understanding of the Constitution. They seldom
if ever even debated most of the issues we consider important for
deciding cases today. Some had a general support (based on the
expectation Washington would be the first president), or opposition
(fear of change), but mostly because they liked and trusted the
ratifiers as personalities.

And these three points are not about a single resolution, but
insights into a more general interpretative regime the Framers and
Ratifiers expected to play out, sometimes pulling in one direction,
sometimes in another. There is not an algorithm to be found.

But they did expect the Constitution to be interpreted by legal
elites, as they expected legal issues generally to be. That's what
they had courts and lawyers for. But those courts were open to lay
interpretation in one important way: the jury. However, while legal issues were originally supposed to be argued in the presence of the jury (unlike the practice today), the jury, along with the judge and
opposing lawyers, expected the trial process to be an intense
exploration of the laws involved, in which all participants learned
to understand the legal issues, and when in doubt about what legal
terms meant, to consult legal authorities. As independent-minded as
they might be, respect for expert authority was the prevailing
paradigm, and one they not only expected would continue, and could
not conceive of doing things otherwise, but comprised an essential
part of the meanings of the terms used, not only in the
Constitution, but in law generally.

Yes, one of the "populists" was Chief Justice John Marshall, largely self-taught in the law
and ignorant of legal history, when he invoked lay meaning of the
term "necessary" as "convenient" in McCulloch v. Maryland.
Jefferson and Madison didn't agree, and I am disposed to go with
their Whig approach to interpretation, as distinct from Tory
("Mansfieldism"), or Monarchist. There were those three schools of
common law interpretation, and at the Founding, the prevailing one
was Whig, at least during the Jeffersonian Era.

Proper interpretation (or construction) is not a matter of following
a rule to be found, but a complex process constrained by structures,
procedures, and common law rules of interpretation, represented in
part by the legal maxims.

After many decades of research, I have reached the point where I can
quickly resolve almost any constitutional question in a way that
seems congruent with the thinking of the Founders, to the extent
that can be discerned. But if graphed it would look like an
extremely complicated flow chart, that even includes some
nondeterministic decision nodes. Imparting that to others, however,
is a challenge.

The alternatives are misframed by use of the terms "elitist" and "populist", which are distinctly modern terms, not 18th century terms. The proper distinction is between (legally) "learned" and "unlearned", and that is the way even lay persons would have distinguished the two approaches. We find no significant evidence that any laypersons in the founding era insisted on "unlearned" use of what are legal terms because they are used in a law, which makes them legal terms by definition. The average man in the street in 1787, if asked for the meaning of a term he didn't know, and told it was being used in a law, would either ask someone he trusted who was learned in the law, or look it up in a copy of Blackstone. I find not a single instance of anyone in the era insisting on his own lay meaning over that of legally learned person. That just is not the way the people of that era thought.

The insistence on unlearned use of words in serious fields, over learned usage, is a much later development, mostly among uneducated rural Western and Southern persons in the late 19th century, and largely among recent immigrants, who felt belittled by the educated. That disdain of the uneducated by the educated and resentment by the uneducated was not a cultural divide in the 18th century. There were social distinctions, but everyone respected the educated.

There has always been tension between laity and the elites, between
surrender and defiance, but the opening of the frontier of the New
World transformed that tension in an important way. The bargain
between laity and elites became not deference, but the lay demand
that the elites persuade them by explaining what they propose and
asking for their consent. They in turn agree to make the effort to
understand well enough to decide wisely. That is not full expertise,
but it is just enough expertise, hopefully, for a particular
decision, to get through the day.

The same bargain applies to citizens, lawmakers, and law. Lay
citizens don't expect to have expert knowledge of all law, just
enough to make decisions in their own lives, but that includes
consenting to the laws that do affect them, especially the
Constitution, which affects everything and everyone.

But for making decisions in legal cases, the lay jury provides the
standard. The key element, which has been largely removed from
current court practice, is for all legal arguments made to the judge
to also be made to the jury, not for them to decide motions of law,
but to review those decisions and then either grant or withhold
their consent in their verdict. It doesn't work to "protect" them
from being "confused" by the legal argument. If they can be
confused, then the problem doesn't lie in presentation of the legal
argument, but the soundness of it. Current practice, by withholding
legal argument from juries, also destroys the fundamental bargain on
which constitutional legitimacy rests.

The problem, of course, is that the initial adoption of a
constitution and the knowledge required to do that wisely, may not
be sustained for the followthrough needed to maintain compliance
indefinitely. In many ways, that requires more knowledge and talent
than founding did, because there are far more competing forces to
deviate from it. Our species may not be up to the challenge.

2014/06/30

The issue with Anwar al Awlaki is not whether he was a citizen, or
even where he was. If we examine the legal history of the right of
due process, we find that it was not confined to citizens (or
"subjects" in the English context), or to the soil of the nation.
However, it was confined to those over whom personal jurisdiction is
established, as by holding one in custody. That means it excepts,
until they are made prisoners:

1. Foreign military personnel engaged in hostilities against us or
our allies.
2. Pirates, engaged in warlike acts against assets of nations other
than their own.
3. Traitors, U.S. citizens engaged in warlike acts against assets of
their own nation.
4. Violent felons, while actively engaged in crime.

It is that personal jurisdiction and custody that defines the
boundary between whether it is permissible to apply deadly force
without due process, or whether it is not. Citizenship and location
are irrelevant, except as to whether one is a traitor or a pirate.

Presuming the premise that Anwar al Awlaki was actively engaged in
hostilities (warlike acts) against the U.S., as a U.S. citizen, that
makes his activity treason. If he were not a U.S. citizen, and since
he was a nonstate actor, it would be piracy.

But he was not in custody, and it is a well-established principle of
law that while we should always try, if it can be done safely, to
secure custody of an offender, when it cannot the offender stands as
an "outlaw" — someone outside the protections of law.

The same principles apply to a self-defense situation: While the
offender is threatening injury or death one may kill him. but once
he surrenders one may not.

So the only questions are, (1) whether he was engaged in warlike
acts against the U.S. or its allies, and (2) whether it was safe to
capture him. If the answers were yes and no, respectively, then it
was permissible to kill him. And, yes, the president, and other
officials, do have the power to make that determination, subject to
review. If after a review it is found the determinations were
incorrect, then the officials may be held liable.

2014/06/28

Much has been written, and miswritten, on the Magna Carta. It
expressed several key principles of law that were incorporated into
the U.S. Constitution, and most other national and state
constitutions. Of course, most of it is no longer applicable. It was
written for the legal situation in feudal England in 1215, covering
issues that just don't arise in modern republics.

The key point that remains controversial today is in two parts:

a. Officials, including the chief executive (the king) is subject to
the same laws as everyone else.
b. Those officials are personally liable for the injuries they do,
contrary to law.

What is presumed is that officials only have limited powers. The
king is not the sovereign, because he is subject to higher laws —
the laws of nature — which honest men can discover and apply, in
principle. (In practice they tend to "find" that the law favors
them, but that is a separate question.)

That's why it was deemed so outrageous for Nixon to say, "It's legal
if the president does it."

But Nixon's comment is revealing, because while these principles are
accepted by almost all officials, at least in public, the problem
comes when they or their appointees decide whether what they are
doing is lawful. If it is lawful, they can't be held liable for
injuries, but if a suit for damages is not even allowed to be heard
on its merits, there is no way for an independent forum (a jury) to
decide whether it was lawful. The problem with "qualified immunity",
as currently practiced, is that the injured party can't get a trial
on the merits.

"Sovereign immunity" is not the same as official immunity. That is
about the state being liable, rather than the official. Again, it makes
some sense to restrict how one who might get a judgment against the
state may collect, generally from a fund established by the
legislature to pay such claims. If judgment creditors could seize
any state property they can find, the courts that grant such
judgments would have the power to destroy the state. However, that
does not mean a claimant should be prevented from getting a trial on
the merits, by requiring that he must get the consent of the state
to even get a trial.

The right to redress (which is in the Ninth Amendment, not the
First) requires that one be able to get a trial on the merits, even
if the options for collecting a judgment, or to get injunctive
relief, are limited. It should certainly always be possible to get a
declaratory judgment on any legal question, even if that brings no
other relief than the support of public opinion.

As I have often said, the problem is not that we have "lost" our
rights, or that, since every right must have at least one remedy, we
have "lost" our remedies. The problem is that access to our remedies
has been put out of the reach of most people, at an affordable
cost. That is a problem of custom, policy, practice and procedure,
not the law per se.

Any real reforms need to open the legal system to intervention by
outsiders who are not controlled by it. That means both structural
and procedural reforms, not just aspirational laws.

Some write about the Magna Carta as though it was some unprecedented
breakthrough in legal affairs, if not in Europe, then at least in
England. Not really. Almost all monarchs in Europe of that time,
even if some claimed rule by "divine right", were subject to being
deposed by a class of aristocrats, and to having a new one elected
by them. The barons at Runnymede were just pushing back against
monarchical overreach, but they did codify their position in terms
that, while it was initially intended only to protect them, also
came to be understood to protect common people as well.

It did not take long for King John to start ignoring the Magna
Carta, and his successors further ignored it. Finally, Simon de
Montfort, Earl of Leicester, revolted against King Henry III,
established the first English parliament with the Provisions of
Oxford, but those reforms died with him at the Battle of Evesham.
(Had he lived political and legal history might have been advanced
by 600 years.) However, although the Provisions were suppressed, the
idea could not be completely, and that led to the Confirmatio
Cartarum (1297), which united Magna Carta to the common law by
declaring that the Magna Carta could be pled in court. Once court
precedents began to be built on it, the line of legal rights it
began slowly gained ground over the centuries that followed.

It is sometimes, mistakenly, argued that the Magna Carta laid the basis for grand juries or trial by jury. But the council of barons was a precursor of a parliament, particularly of a House of Lords, not of a grand jury, and at that time the customary method of deciding cases was combat or compurgation (getting twelve people to swear you were telling the truth). No, the grand jury for indictment, and the trial jury for a verdict, has its roots in the juries of ancient Greece, Israel, and Rome. The size of the jury comes from Hebrew law, the sanhedrin, which got its name from the Greek synedrion, and developed under Greek rule.

The struggle for legal rights and republican government has had a
long, complicated history, with advances and retreats all across
Europe and other parts of the world. We document much of that
history on our site. So don't get discouraged. Our battles are just
the latest episode in a long saga.

2014/06/24

1. The 14th Amendment did not confer U.S. citizenship on individuals
born on U.S. soil, whose parents were not subject to the
jurisdiction of a foreign power. That was already the established
rule, inherited from English law, and U.S. citizenship arguably
began on non-state territory with adoption of the Articles of
Confederation (ratified 1781) and the adoption of the Northwest and
Southwest Ordinances (1787), which transferred sovereignty of the
western territories, previously subject to conflicting claims by the
states, to the emerging United States (a term that originated during
the earlier (1774) Articles of Association under which the War of
Independence was fought.

2. Adoption of the U.S. Constitution made all persons born on the
soil of any of the states U.S. citizens as well as those born on any
of the non-state territories, and conferred on Congress the power to
make rules for naturalization.

3. The U.S. Constitution put restrictions of the states in Art. I
Sec. 10, and since all restrictions on government powers are rights,
or more precisely, immunities, it thereby established rights of U.S.
persons (not just citizens) in the states against their states,
justiciable in U.S. courts.

4. The language of the Bill of Rights (1791), except that of the
First Amendment, seemed to apply equally to the U.S. and state
governments, and like Art. I Sec. 10, to make an exception to the
omission from Art. III of federal court jurisdiction over cases
between a citizen and his state, but it attached rights to persons,
not just citizens. (The Framers, in writing Art. III, presumed a person who was a resident of a state would also be a citizen of that state, and did not anticipate states would later assert a different position.)

5. However, the states defined state citizenship as well, and in
ways that did not include the same individuals as were included in
U.S. citizenship, such as blacks.

6. Some of the southern, slaveholding, states belatedly realized
that if the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause applied to them, and
federal courts had jurisdiction, slaves could sue in federal courts
for their freedom, as deprivation of liberty without due process of
law.

7. This led to two main cases. Barron v. Baltimore (1833)
and Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857). In Barron, slavery
was not the issue. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment was the
issue. But it was realized, when it got to the Supreme Court, that
if the Court decided in favor of Barron, it would establish
a precedent that would allow slavery to be challenged, so it decided
against him, and CJ Marshall (wrongly) held the U.S. courts did not have
jurisdiction to decide cases over the Bill of Rights between a
citizen and his state.

8. In Dred Scott slavery was the issue. The problem was that
the federal courts could not avoid jurisdiction because persons of
different states were the opposing parties. The Bill of Rights, and
other provisions of the U.S. Constitution, associate rights with
personhood, not citizenship, and it was already established
precedent that blacks were persons, so CJ Taney for the U.S.
Supreme Court weaseled out of the trap by (wrongly) holding that blacks were
not and could not be citizens, and thus, federal courts would not
have jurisdiction, since Art. III uses the term "citizen" instead of
"person" in defining jurisdiction. The effect was to make the rights
of persons not citizens non-justiciable in federal courts, contrary
to the obvious intent of the Bill of Rights.

9. By the time the view developed that both precedents had to be
overturned, and that it would take an amendment to do that, many
more precedents had been built on those two cases. So it was not
enough for an amendment to just refer to the two cases and
explicitly overturn them. It had to adopt general language that
would cover the entire system of precedents based on them, past and
future.

10. That left the problem that the states could not be allowed to
deny rights to persons on their territories by defining them as
noncitizens. That could make the U.S. Constitution a nullity in such
states, by doing something outlandish like defining Jim Bob and Red
Neck as the only citizens. So what the 14th Amendment did do was
make all U.S. citizens state citizens if they reside in the state
(although it neglected to define residency). That included blacks.
However, it also neglected to make clear that most rights belong to
persons and not just citizens.

11. Some would argue that the language they chose was not very
clear, and that a better wording was needed, but if one tries to
find better language, it is not all that easy. (If I had been there,
I could have done it, as I have above, but I was born too late.)

12. There is actually no U.S. Supreme Court decision that sustains
the offspring born on U.S. soil of parents who have entered U.S.
soil illegally to be natural born U.S. citizens. Such parents are
arguably not "subject to the jurisdiction" in that they did not seek
and obtain consent to enter. All the cases have either been parents
who entered legally, or for which the legality of their entry was
not before the court. There is a presumption that those born on U.S.
soil are natural born citizens, subject to proof to the contrary,
and in the absence of someone to argue that position, the
presumption stands. If someone wants to get a precedent to that
point, one needs to take a case to the U.S. Supreme Court.